Q and A Week 7

10th February

If this day was an animal, which animal would it be?

A cat show cat. Wanting nothing more to curl up in the warm and be cosy and peaceful, but instead being busy, busy, busy.

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11th February

How did you get to work today?

Woke up.

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12th February

What is your biggest obstacle right now?

Lack of money.

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13th February

What's your favourite question to ask people?

What's your favourite book?

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14th February

Did you kiss someone today?

Two people and two cats.

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15th February

Write down the cure for a broken heart.

Time.

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16th February

What was the last performance or concert you went to?

We Will Rock You in August 2010.

Q and A Week 3

13th January

Where do you want to travel next?

France

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14th January

Are you a leader or a follower?

That depends very much on the circumstances.

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15th January

On a scale of one to ten, how was your lunch today?

7 - nice ham rolls, coke and a Boost.

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16th January

Do you owe someone money? Does someone owe you?

No people, just credit cards and a mortgage!

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17th January

What's the oldest thing you're wearing today?

Um, probably my slippers. Think they're from 2006.

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18th January

What was peaceful about today?

Mostly everything. Lots of snow falling all day so Anthony came home early.

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19th January

List three foods you ate today

Apricot and Blueberry cereal bars
Bacon baguette
Tinned peaches

Q and A Week 2

6th January

 

Today was tough because...

...of rushing around to get ready for jury service tomorrow.

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7th January

 

You are lucky; how so or not so?

I'm healthy (barring stupid post-birth issues). Anthony is healthy. Megan is healthy. My mum and sister and friends are healthy. We also have a roof over our heads and lots of books ;-)

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8th January

 

What song is stuck in your head?

Round and Round - Imagine Dragons

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9th January

 

Was today typical? Why or why not?

Typical in going to Baby Sensory, not typical in having mama staying here.

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10th January

 

Write down something that inspired you today.

All of my NCT ladies in one way or another, particularly Vicky's singing!

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11th January

 

Today you lost...

...nothing! And i got my phone back after its overnight escape into Sammy's changing bag.

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12th January

 

What's your favourite accessory?

I don't worry about accessorising in terms of fashion. Anthony would probably be my criminal accessory.

Q and A Week 1

1st January

What is your mission?

"To boldly go where no man...." oh hang on, that's someone elses mission.

My mission is to be the best that I can. At mothering. At loving. At being me.

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2nd January

Can people change?

Sometimes. But it depends on what needs to change and if they want to change it.

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3rd January

What are you reading right now?

The Passage by Justin Cronin

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4th January

The best part of today?

Megan singing to her toys after lunch.

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5th January

What was the last restaurant you went to?

The Crown at Wergs for our NCT Christmas lunch.

The living room saga...

...continues.


As I was saying, we'd originally booked ourselves a weeks holiday that was supposed to be spent going away with Anthony's whole family to celebrate his parents 50th wedding anniversary later this year. It had to be that week because it was half term. Although since nobody could agree about where to go and how much it should cost, nothing happened.

I thought I'd get to spend a nice bit of time with Anthony and we could both unwind after the stress of the last few months.

Nope.

I went off to stay with my mother on the 13th, and Anthony came to stay for one night on the 18th and then drive me back on the 19th.

His dad came to stay for a week and they blitzed the living room. The old brown wall paper was pretty easy to remove, but the fact that the previous owner had removed, then added, then removed a succession of dado rails, and patched up any holes with concrete, made it not so straight forward after all.

But now I have a living room with walls painted in a lovely grey-white which makes it feel a million times bigger.

I also have a living room that contains the tv and its stand, the desk and computer, and the sofa.

It feels horribly big and empty. Pretty much like it has since work started on it over two months ago.

The next step is to get a new carpet. We've chosen it, and my lovely mother is contributing towards the cost (as A's parents paid for the floor renewal) (While I am grateful that they did, as we couldn't have afforded it, the fact that I am supposed to be grateful about something I had no choice about, makes it impossible to be grateful *enough*)

We just have to get it fitted. And my patience is rapidly vanishing.

After weeks of doing things based on other people making decisions, I suggested that we get the carpet fitted next week as otherwise it'll be another month before I can start getting any bookcases back in here. Of course, the timing isn't right for his dad to be able to pop over during the week for the hour that the carpet men will need. Even though we don't know which day they can do yet.

*head desk*

If the carpet goes down next week, then I can spend next weekend, when I'm not working, supervising people moving the bookcases in and refilling them. If it has to wait for my next weekday off work (the 9th of March), then either the bookcases will be moved and filled while I'm at work, (which I don't want, as I want to sort them out as they are moved), or the bookcases need to wait until the 17/18th March which is my next weekend off.

Oh, and the first Grand Prix of the year. Australia. 6am race start time Sunday morning.

Also the beginning of our last weeks holiday together before the baby arrives. Which is already filling up with eleventy-million things to do.

Also more than three months since the work in here started and 95% of my library became inaccessible.

Unsurprisingly, I'm a little itchy!

And ranty. But you hadn't spotted that, had you?

*NEWSFLASH*

After I got a little bit over emotional on Friday evening, we went to the carpet shop. They're fitting it between 9 and 12 on Monday. #happykate 

I am very aware...

...that nowadays I am a very intermittent blogger. I am trying my hardest not to be.

I have been trying to blog by thinking up ideas ahead of time - this then means that I feel like I have already written the blog post in question. When, of course, I have not.

I have been trying to blog by not thinking up ideas ahead of time - this then means that I go "I need to blog" and then go "errrr, about what...".

The fact that I have just had two weeks off work (holiday I booked in March when partly expecting Anthony to be able to get the time off too (he couldn't) and thoroughly expecting to be off work for a year from the start of November (maternity leave)) should have meant that I blogged. If only about my plans for my four days down south, or about what I did when I was down there.

Instead I did a lot of cross-stitching, played a bit of WoW, read/listened to (Audible rock) a lot of DiscWorld and did assorted jigsaw puzzling, Pinteresting, and clearing out of old cross-stitch magazining while watching an awful lot of NCIS.

Then this morning, despite going to bed at 2.30am (a very failed attempt at getting back onto "normal" time), I woke up at 8am and had ideas for blogs and crafts and all sorts of things. So instead of just snuggling back to sleep and losing them all, I got up and wrote some very short notes on life, the universe, and everything. (and found a million beautiful Whovian things on Pinterest, but that's today's previous post)

So I'm not going to promise suddenly organised blogging, 5 days a week, with a topic for each day. But I'm going to add "blogging at least once a week" to my Now List (that's from this here book), and see what happens.

I am currently...

...so deeply in love with this that it hurts.

The Dalek Game by tanaudel (not only for the illustrations, but also for her "Fire and Hemlock" inspired name)



I stumbled across her dalek illustrations on Flickr while I was drooling over these heavenly Mucha inspired prints



Now I just have to work out: a) where I can put them in my house, b) what I have to not buy in order to afford them.

History might just...

...repeat itself.

33 years ago, on the 14th of March 1978, a little football team called Leyton Orient won a sixth round FA Cup replay 2-1 against Middlesborough to get through to the semi-final of the FA Cup.

They had defeated Norwich City (1-1, replay 1-0), Blackburn Rovers (3-1), and Chelsea (0-0, replay 2-1) to get to the sixth round.

In the semi-final they unfortunately lost 3-0 to Arsenal.

But in winning against Middlesborough, the damage had already been done. I was born 9 months later.

In this years FA Cup, Leyton Orient have defeated Dagenham & Redbridge (1-1, replay 3-2), Droylesden (1-1, replay 8-2 aet), Norwich City (1-0) and Swansea City (2-1).

In the fifth round of this years FA Cup, Leyton Orient will be playing Arsenal for the first time since that 1978 match.

Here's hoping that allowing for prevailing winds and good luck and all that jazz, I can be embarrassing a child of mine with this story. Not quite in 9 months time (cos not pregnant yet, plus also, you can't embarrass a newborn) but hopefully within the next year.

Fingers crossed eh.

A meme about..

...Twitter.

Thank you to the lovely Caron for tagging me with this meme. I especially like her description of me as: "the lovely book loving, F1 loving, Lewis Hamilton loathing Kate"

When did you join Twitter?

On the 4th of March 2007. Yes. I know! Having read back on my old blog for March 2007 it turns out I joined Twitter before I joined Facebook. Now that's just scary.

Why did you join Twitter?

I had a few blogging friends who joined it at the same time, namely Keris, Caroline and Soraya. A couple of others like Jamaila joined a couple of months later. I thought it seemed like an interesting thing. It has become a fascinating thing.

Who is/was your first or oldest follower? Who did you follow first? Tell me all about them.

The first people I followed were/are:
Keris
EmLah
DianeShipley
Sorayaleila
Caroline_S

The first people to follow me were/are:
Keris
EmLah
ClaireAllan
DianeShipley
Caroline_S

(this is what happens when you're an early adopter!)

Do you have any celebrities following you, or have you ever had a DM from a celeb?

I have a couple of celebrity followers. Like a few of the early adopters, I'm followed by Stephen Fry (although I very much doubt he reads my tweets). I'm also followed by Jason Bradbury (from the Gadget Show), Meg Cabot (another early adopter bonus), Katie Fforde (one of my favourite authors), and Phill Jupitus (who sent me a DM saying he loved my use of the word "ditsy" in my Twitter profile and promptly followed me).

As for DM's, I've had a few from the above mentioned fabulous people, plus Suzi Perry has sent me a few (she tends to reply to messages via DM, unlike most other celebs I follow who often reply in the main feed). I also had a couple from Nelson Piquet Jr. after the events of last year.

If you could follow anyone not on Twitter – alive, dead, real or fictional – on Twitter, who would it be?

Hmmm. That's a tough one. There's quite a few fictional characters that I would love to see on Twitter, but to be honest none of them are actually the kind of people that would use Twitter! I do sometimes wonder what my ex Jamie would have made of it all. I suspect he'd have introduced me to it!

Which came first? Twitter or blog?

Oh the blog, the blog. First ever blog post

------------------------

I now apparently have to tag a few other people. I shall go with the usual suspects, Keris, Clover and Caroline. Plus Kayels and Jay to get some Twitter-first people in there too!

It is absolutely...

...persisting it down in Wolverhampton today (as it seems to be across most of the country) and my first thought (well, after the inevitable "who am I? where am I? what time is it?" thoughts) this morning was "yay, a home day!"

A rainy day outside when I can stay indoors with Anthony and we can putter about tidying, decorating or watching TV and playing computer games. (he's playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II as I type)

Then I remembered that last night he said he wanted to go to a local Ford dealership to have a look at some cars.

In the rain. Like we did a few weeks ago. Yuck.

So I got up and dressed and came downstairs to ask what time he wanted to go out.

He looked at me like I was INSANE and said: "What? In this weather?!"

Jeans off, comfy trousers & hair dye on.

Hurrah!

...and the lights go out...

...no, not for Earth Hour.

The race is on!

What happened to Barrichello?

Button in front by miles...

Heidfeld with a puncture.

Barichello caused a little bit of fuss at the first corner - carbon fibre all over the place and poor old Mark Webber lost his front wing.

Kovalainen is out with a very broken looking car.

Button is already 4.4 secs ahead on Lap 3.

**time for me to have a look at the onboard camera screens on the BBC**

Onboard camera is sticking with Hamiltwunt at the moment so I'll pass on that.

Not as many retirements as I thought there'd be by this point! (Certainly not as many as last year!)

Rosberg just scampered past Kimi, then Barrichello tried it and clipped him.

Kimi in the pits - puncture?

Rosberg now menacing Kubica who is all over the back of Massa.

Pit stops have started - Ferrari and MacLaren have both now used their soft tires - hopefully this will give Ferrari an advantage at the end.

Rosberg had a pitstop problem that held the poor boy up. But it meant we got to watch a lovely pass on him by Kimi.

Button is miles in front!

Nakajima into the wall - safety car.... poor Button!

That whole thing with the safety car was a bit of a screw up, they let it go after Button so the whole field had to go past it! Now Button will be stuck behind it for ages... and the debris/car seems to have been shifted already!

The safety car has been out for ages with the track clear, very frustrating!

Massa keeps locking up. Brundle - "His tyres will look like a 50p piece soon"

Piquet takes the first corner sideways and slides right to the back of the very wide gravel trap!

Hamilton passes Glock very easily...again!

33 laps to go BTW.

Have got the perfect setup now - TV showing main feed, PC showing the onboard streams. Lovely jubbly.

20 laps to go, things have quietened down for the moment, but the last pit stops are all starting...

Hamilton comes out of the pits and decides to try and squeeze Massa off the track straight away. Kimi bumps into the wall...but keeps going.

Fisichella up to 8th!

Eeep!

Button had a pit stop problem, can't tell if he got enough fuel, but he got out in front of Vettel.

Drat it, Massa is out. His car was sounding very very ill.

Barrichello pits and comes out behind Rosberg, then a couple of laps later sticks in a fabulous pass.

Glock is trying to take people out as he tries to pass them - apart from Hamilton of course.

Hamilton is up to 7th. Anthony says - "It pains me to say it, but he's driven a good race."

Holy crap.

Kubica and Vettel duking it out.

Kubica takes Vettel out then hits the wall himself.

Poor Vettel.

Hurrah for Button! Hurrah for Barrichello! (unless anything breaks)

*********************

So just as last year, it's the British national anthem. But this time it's for a driver who has really earned it.

w00t!!!

No chance of going back to bed as I did last year, partly cos the race was later, partly cos I'm too fucking hyper!

*chequered flag*

Good morning...

...Australia.

Yup, I'm awake again. But this morning doesn't seem so bad since the clocks changed this morning. Instead of getting up at 5am, it was 6am!

I am going to blog this just like last year, well, not just like last year, I'm going to put the whole lot in one post and update as I go - that way nobody reads the last bit first!

Once again the clever buggers at the BBC are doing text updates, and the fact that Twitter has taken off this year means that I've also got Tweetag to keep an eye on (and find some new tweeps through).

It's now 40 minutes to race start...time to get everything organised - no ad breaks to get extra drinks in!

Lazy Sunday...

...Afternoon.

Well lazy entire weekend to be honest. But oh my goodness I NEEDED it!

Last week was one of those weeks where nothing is simple and every task takes 15 times longer than it was supposed to.

Anthony was back on the 5-1 shift for the first time in ages which meant that up until Thursday night I only got to see him at 3am when he came up to bed, and at 7am when I got up. The whole balance between wanting to see him and wanting an unbroken night of sleep made me rather ratty I must confess.

At work everything was very stop-start. By Friday I reduced my To-Do list to one thing - Rearrange the 3 for 2 tables. It took me all flipping day!

(and I didn't blog in the week because I didn't want it to turn into one big moan...oops!)

So, a Saturday with Anthony sleeping in (his night shift meant he got in at 8.30am) and me pottering about doing laundry and ptootling. Saturday evening spent sewing and watching CSI:NY while Anthony kicked ass on WoW.

Today I have been kicking ass on WoW (haven't played for ages) and got myself up to level 75. Anthony has been in charge of the TV remote and also prodded me into tidying up the bathroom and throwing out all sorts of bottles of stuff that were never gonna get used.

This weekend was very much needed. Now it's February and that's always a better month. Plus, it's only four weeks until I'm off to Center Parcs again for a week family holidayness.

Ohhh, and I'm managing to keep my list of books read in 2009 up to date - last week was a real slow reading week!

It's been...

...a very nice weekend.

Yesterday we did a bit of reorganising, had a visit from Alf (and his mum) and then I fell asleep on the sofa after Leyton Orient lost again.

Today we went on our annual trip to Merry Hell as I needed some more shampoo from Lush (got some I Love Juicy and some Daddy-O this time).

Of course we couldn't go to Merry Hell without stopping at Hotel Chocolat too...

I am now rubbing my hands in glee over as I have yummy Creamed Caramel Chocolate Drops and also some very exotic (and not on the website) peach, lemon and blueberry truffles (6 of each flavour).

Nom, nom, nom.

*smile*

150 songs...

...for my 30th Birthday. (Part One)

Once upon a time I wrote a post about music. Then I wrote a small follow-up to it.

I found those 18th Birthday Tapes the other day (they so deserve capitals) and was reading through the track listings and smiling at the memories that appeared.

So I decided to create my own playlist for my 30th. One hundred songs that represented the thirty years that I'd been around. Then I hit a few snags...mainly the fact that I couldn't narrow it down to 100. So I upped it a little. The list is now 150 songs, split up into 0-10, 10-20 and 20-30 sections so that each decade gets a fair shot. Not every song is in the decade it was released in, they fit in where I remember them within my life.

It's been very good fun - although Anthony is a little scared by some of the choices, and is very scared by some of the songs he didn't know that I then played him.

As I suspected in that first post, there are a few songs that have carried across to the 150. There are also a few that haven't due to not conjuring up a moment in my head. The Beatles are a casualty for this very reason, as are The Rolling Stones. I know. Shocking isn't it. They summon up a general time (sixth form and uni respectively) but no specific memories so I've had to be ruthless and chop them out.

While I'm working on the 150for30, here are my 100for18 - the result of three days choosing and locating the songs (as I had to find all the LP's/tapes with them on) and three weeks or so of Dad arranging them, copying them onto the reel-to-reel and then making the cassettes.

Queen - Headlong

Del Amitri - Driving With the Brakes On

CSN - Just a Song Before I Go

Eagles - Take it to the Limit

Livingstone Taylor - House at Pooh Corner (which I want on the 150for30 list, but this version isn't on iTunes so I've had to go for the version by Loggins & Messina - meh)

Neil Young - Pocahontas

Beatles - Revolution 9

CSN - Long Time Gone

CSN - Cowboy of Dreams

Billy Joel - Only the Good Die Young

Chicago - A Hard Habit to Break

Don McLean - American Pie

Jim Croce - Have to Say I Love You in a Song

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Blinded by the Light

Oasis - Morning Glory/The Swamp Song/Champagne Supernova (since they all just flow into each other on the album)

Four Seasons - December '63

Beatles - The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

Jim Croce - Photographs and Memories

Eagles - Hotel California

Billy Joel - Piano Man

Elton John - Candle in the Wind

Neil Young - Rockin' in the Free World

Beatles - Yesterday

CSNY - Deja Vu

Jim Croce - New York's not my Home

Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Ash - Oh Yeah

Boyzone - Key to my Life

Levellers - Hope Street

Commodores - Easy Like Sunday Morning

Jim Croce - Operator

CSN - Suite: Judy Blue-Eyes

Beatles - Hey Jude

Neil Young - Like a Hurricane

Beatles - Ticket to Ride

Doors - Strange Days

Madness - Our House

CSNY - Our House (two very different songs with the same title - I always loved the fact Dad put them together)

Billy Joel - Always a Woman to Me

Stills-Young Band - Long May You Run

Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever

Queen - Radio Ga-Ga

Chris De Burgh - Lady in Red (on the tape track listing as by Chris Rea for some reason)

Dodgy - Making the Most of

Aerosmith - Cryin'

Ash - Girl From Mars

Who - My Generation

Bonzos - I'm the Urban Spaceman (Produced by Apollo C. Vermouth, otherwise known as Paul McCartney)

Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

Oasis - Wonderwall

Al Stewart - Song on the Radio

Mama's & Papa's - California Dreamin'

Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man

Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

CSN - Military Madness

Chicago - If You Leave me Now

CSN - Teach Your Children

CSNY - Ohio (These two songs are forever linked in my mind)

Eagles - Best of My Love

Bluetones - Carnt Be Trusted (When I wrote this on the list Dad asked if I needed spelling lessons, then he said the band needed them!)

Queen - We Will Rock You

Ruth - Fear of Flying

Neil Young - Round and Round (It Won't be Long)

CSN - Simple Man

Billy Joel - Uptown Girl

Huey Lewis - The Power of Love

CSNY - Helpless

Beatles - All You Need is Love

Mungo Jerry - In the Summertime

Bluetones - Putting Out Fires

CSN - Horses Through a Rainstorm

Billy Joel - Christie Lee

Doors - When You're Strange (With the voice of my friend David at the beginning saying "These really are strange days, and they're full of strange people too")

Beatles - Birthday

Bluetones - Bluetonic

Queen - Killer Queen

Dodgy - Grassman

Alanis Morrisette - You Learn

Bryan Adams - Run to You

Doors - Light My Fire

Neil Young - Unknown Legend

CSN - Blackbird

Billy Joel - The Ballad of Billy the Kid

Beatles - Good Day Sunshine

Crosby & Nash - Cathedral

Beatles - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Jim Croce - Time in a Bottle

CSN - Chicago/We Can Change The World

Alanis Morrisette - Ironic

Crosby & Nash - Carry Me

Blur - Charmless Man

Queen - Don't Stop Me Now

Al Stewart - Year of the Cat

Billy Joel - Famous Last Words

Anyone still here?

So lets see... at 18 I was in a phase of listening to a whole lot of my Dad's music, with occasional bursts of Billy Joel and Queen (courtesy of Mum), and a few dribs of current tunes.

One of the reasons I split the 150for30 into three sections...

Did you all...

...have a nice Christmas?

I had a very nice Christmas Day, a not so nice Boxing Day (due to being at work serving idiots who can't wait ONE MORE DAY to go shopping) and then a very very nice birthday.

I have TWO new Leyton Orient shirts (a team shirt and a polo shirt) to wear plus some very scary boot-style slippers that my mother sent me and assorted other lovely things. These include a very very posh handbag from my darling sister who is trying so hard to make me elegant and grown-up. Pictures of this will follow, because it's just too damn gorgeous not to share!

We also appear to have a breeding population of Terry's Chocolate Oranges since everywhere you turn there's another one!

This may conflict slightly with my goal reaching on my lovely shiny Wii Fit that I got for my birthday. Chocolate Oranges are not exactly healthy food after all.

Today is a day for chilling out even more, especially since Anthony is fighting off the lurgy. He's doing this by shooting people on his XBox (not a 360, he wouldn't let me get him one) while I work on my birthday playlist.

Very unimpressed that "Leyton" pops up on the spellchecker!

I'm still here...

...just mostly asleep.

Seriously.

I'm tired all the time at the moment and I've gone from sleeping 2-3 hours a night (as I have been for the past year) to conking out at 8pm.

Last weekend I went to bed at 10.30pm on the Saturday night (having forced myself to stay up so that I actually got to spend some time with Anthony), and I woke up at 1pm...

More blood tests tomorrow, assuming I actually BLEED this time!

In other news I have been recording Silent Witness using my lovely shiny V+ box, and today I got a bit of a shock. I was watching it when all of a sudden I recognised the guy on screen.

I couldn't remember his name at first but eventually my poor tired brain realised that it was the brother of a guy I house-shared with at uni. It was very strange to see him on tv, last time was about 10 years ago when he was starring in Hollyoaks. (Although his character Sash isn't mentioned on there at all...strange)

It's been...

...a pretty good weekend considering.

That's considering the fact that I've been working both days and that Anthony's car is still playing up. The car thing meant that I saw him when he met me from work on Saturday night to go shopping (minimalist shopping since we had to carry it all) and that he spent last night and today here but has just left. He's very grumpy about his car, and very grumpy indeed that his car playing up means he has to cadge lifts from his dad - something he hasn't done for 17 years or so.

I now won't see him until next Saturday, probably. That's the main thing that's making me grumpy - I never know when he'll be able to get here or for how long he can stay, and if he can't get here at all it's rather depressing.

So last night and then when I got back from work today we did what Deanna describes as boating and what we think of as bed snuggling. We're not quite in the same league as her, for us it consisted of eating first (curry, yum), then lounging in bed watching Buffy until we both got too sleepy. The decision to do this last night was driven by the fact that neither of us could get warm and so bed with electric blankets was deemed very necessary.

My solitary form of snuggling has become me curled up on the sofa listening to audio books (rather than watching TV) and sewing. I've just finished listening to I Capture the Castle - in a very disjointed fashion as I realised I'd heard half of part one, then half of part two so had to match the story back up again. On Friday I had to choose between Sabriel (read by Tim Curry) or Stardust (read by Neil Gaiman himself). I went for Stardust and boy is it good. It's fabulous listening to the author read their own work, it means you know it sounds the way they want it to.

I have tomorrow off before a week of doom starts (out at an event on Tues, changeover Wed, generally short-staffed all week) and I think I just might have to listen to some more of it then. In fact, I shall put it on my to-do list for tomorrow.

Sorry...

...that I didn't post about soup the other night, I didn't get out of the bath til about 10pm (mmmmmm, lovely three hour bath) and then I got distracted by the widget again.

There will be a soup post at some point.

In the meantime I would like to say HELLO! to all the lovely people who have been here via the widget and hoped that I get better soon.

So hello and thank you to:

Trousers, nmj, spacedlaw, ken, Susan, Lady in red, Country Girl, Ashley Ladd, Kathryn, Papercuts, Brom, hullabrouhaha, liz fenwick, Nik's Blog, DK Green, Twinville, Pamela Terry and Edward, Crystal Jigsaw and Leigh. (I now have 35 new blogs in the Widgetness folder on Google Reader - wah hoo!)

Also big hugs to Michelle who has also had the lurgy (as have her two adorable boys), and of course the fabulous Caroline who wrote the book that needed the widget (as built by Stray) in the first place!

I am feeling much better today after an unfortunate incident yesterday when I laughed so hard at Lewis Hamiltwunt qualifying in 15th that I actually made myself sick.
Nice...
Luckily the afternoon/evening spent flopped on the sofa, flicking through cross-stitch magazines to find my next project (this one at last) while watching Season Three of Buffy has restored me to nearly normal again.

As I am feeling better I have been very grown-up and written myself a To-Do List.

1. Do washing-up.
2. Watch Italian GP, hopefully laughing at Lewis throughout.
3. Do some work on either my mothers present, or this cross-stitch (that I found in a drawer, half-finished and neglected since 2003).

I hope that you all have a very nice Sunday and I will leave you with Sebastian Vettel's reaction to getting pole position in qualifying yesterday (and becoming the youngest driver ever to do so)


(I just want to give him a hug!)

Edited to add: Hooray!!! Vettel just won his first Grand Prix. Youngest driver to do so and an absolute sweetie to boot!

Things to do...

...on a rainy Saturday in August.

• Stay up into the early hours (of Saturday) to watch the dressage.
• Get up earlier than you wanted to in order to go view a house.
• Think that the house had a nice kitchen and sun room - shame about the rest of it.
• Come home and change into snuggly warm clothes (and hang soaking jeans up to dry).
• Play a little bit of WoW, until you get fed up with having Star Trek on and then you let Anthony have the computer.
• Watch the evening session of the dressage.
• Have crumpets with peanut butter, or alternatively with honey and liquorice allsorts...

• Watch the men's gymnastics while cross-stitching and snuggling with Foley..
• Snuggle down on the sofa and doze off watching the football scores.
• Wake up an hour later to be told that although the Leyton Orient score was 2-1 when you went to sleep, they lost 2-3.
• Discover that boyfriend is taking the proverbial and that they did actually win 2-1.
• Watch a very good film while doing more stitching and snuggling with Esme.
• Go to bed rather than watching more dressage (being aware that it's the cross-country on Monday morning).

I hope you all had a lovely day too.